Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I want to get my Covid booster shot. It's been a year, and the new formulation protects better against some of the newer strains. And I can get a flu shot at the same time. Yay, right? Except last week I scheduled these shots for next week Friday at CVS, and today CVS emailed me canceling my appointment.

The same thing happened to Hawk. She booked her shots for the same day but at a different store.

And a similar thing happened to a friend a few weeks ago. Though I think they booked the shot at Walgreen.

Does CVS just suck? No, I suspect the problem is supply of vaccine doses. There have been some reports in the news that supplies are kind of herky-jerky right now.

I've rebooked at the nearby CVS store for a week later (two weeks from now). Meanwhile I'll look at finding a shot somewhere else sooner. A friend who was over this evening said he was able to get a walk-up shot at Costco.

For years I've been joking, "Shop at CVS, kill a tree." Except it's not really a joke because, going back at least 10 years now, the drugstore chain has printed ridiculously long receipts even for single item purchases. How long is ridiculous? I blogged about it 8 years when I bought 2 items and was handed a receipt over 31 inches (79cm) long.

Over the intervening 8 years CVS has done better by allowing customers to choose emailed receipts instead of paper. Many of the employees stubbornly press the "Kill a Tree"— I mean, "Print Receipt"— button despite our account preferences being set to email, but it works at least half the time. Except yesterday I specifically asked for a receipt (I need it for records purposes) and, ooh boy, the printer started going....



And going, and going, and going....



43.5 inches. More than 3 1/2 feet. 110 cm. For one item that cost just $6.54. Ridiculous.

Do better, CVS!

After writing this morning about how Moderna and J&J Covid-19 vaccines are now approved for booster shots in the US I reminded Hawk to check for appointments to get her booster. When she looked Thursday night it was too soon after the CDC's approval; clinics hadn't updated their systems to provide shots under the new policy yet.

This morning (Saturday morning) appointments were available at CVS, a local pharmacy/drug store chain we've been customers of for years, but they were being snapped up quickly. When I checked availability there were appointments available throughout the day Tuesday at local stores. Ten minutes later, in the span of time it took Hawk to enter her insurance information, those were all gone and the earliest date available was the following Monday. In the time it took her to click to a different store to see if they had anything sooner and click back, Monday was all booked up. She booked for Tuesday— 10 days away!

Hawk checked back on CVS's website throughout the afternoon to see if anything sooner opened up. It seems like CVS was releasing new appointments all day. She traded up to an appointment late next week then again to an appointment Tuesday night— only 3 days away. Finally, as she kept looking late this afternoon she found one just before dinnertime. She booked it, hopped in the car 30 minutes later, and got her shot. Now we're both boosted!

The roadtrip I planned yesterday to get my first Covid-19 vaccine shot was successful. This was me at about 4:35pm Friday:



The background in this picture may look familiar. You see the aisles and shelves of a well known chain drugstore/pharmacy, the kind of which there are several within 5 miles of my home. As I've written previously this week, though, I wasn't able to get a shot within five miles of home. I searched and searched and found the closest appointment one hundred and five miles from home.

Just finding that appointment took way longer than should have been necessary, but that was only the start. As is often the case, getting there was most of the battle. Here are Five Things:

1) My appointment was in Davis, California, 105 miles away. Davis is beyond even the exurbs of the San Francisco Bay Area. It's out in the Central Valley, part of the greater Sacramento region, in the mostly agricultural and rural County of Yolo. It's not a cow town, though. It's a college town. UC Davis, one of the campuses of the prestigious University of California, is there. Cow Town, aka Vacaville, is 15 miles away. Yes, there's really a city in California whose name literally translates to "Cow Town"!



2) The 105 mile route is mostly highways and could be driven in as little as 1 hour 35 minutes. That's the timing Google Maps gave as I wrote this at 7am Saturday. Going on a Friday afternoon, though, I knew I'd hit traffic. As I left home at 1:30pm Google estimated arrival at 3:31. I was in good shape, I figured. With my 4:15 appointment I'd have time to spare.

It's a good thing I planned "time to spare". There was traffic seemingly everywhere along the route. Friday afternoons, starting as early as 1pm, have always been hell leaving Silicon Valley and driving out toward Sacramento. I thought from Google Maps' estimate the "Friday escape" traffic had abated a bit thanks to the lockdown. Alas, no. Whether it's due to warming weather, people getting more confident about the end of the pandemic, or people just getting sick of pandemic precautions and wanting to travel, the Friday escape route was clogged all the way.

As I sat in one particular traffic jam, barely moving, I updated Google Maps and saw that my ETA had slipped to almost 4:30. I'd be late! Will they give my shot away? I worried. I told myself the answer was "No". If they were going to give it away it'd be at the end of the day, at the end of the week. ...Though here it was Friday afternoon. Acquaintances of mine have gotten shots on Friday afternoons on the basis of, "Hey, we've got unused shots, come on over and get one!"

Traffic picked up a bit after that, and I parked at the pharmacy at exactly 4:15pm. The wait was short, though by the time I was done with my shot 20 minutes later there were several people in line.

3) I was surprised how lax enforcement of the policies for vaccine eligibility is. If you made an appointment, you were given a shot. They simply asked you if you were eligible. All you had to do was nod your head. There was no verification of anything. I didn't even have to show ID.

On the one hand, this is how it should be. Shots for everyone, few questions asked. On the other hand, that's not how it should be. Shots are in short supply, and governments are managing policies to determine which groups of people get priority first, second, third, etc. It's evident from yesterday than where the rubber meets the road, all the policies and rules are just idle talk.

4) On my drive home— which BTW went extremely fast, right around Google Maps' no-traffic 1:35 estimate— I heard an interesting news piece on NPR's "California Report". Vaccine distribution varies significantly by county in California right now. A recent policy to allocate 40% of the supply to "hard hit" areas has disrupted plans counties made before the change. The article noted that Santa Clara County, where I live, has zero zip codes identified by the state as "hard hit". Santa Clara has had to stop scheduling first-shot appointments to save its supply for second shots, they explained. Well, no wonder; the county lost 40% of its supply! Meanwhile, the article continued, counties such as Solano have so much supply they can't find enough people to take the shots. Solano has opened up eligibility wider than state guidelines so its supply doesn't go to waste.

It was ironic that I heard about Solano County as I was driving through Solano County. That's not where I got the shot, though. Davis is in Yolo County, the next one over. But quite possibly Yolo is in a similar situation to neighboring Solano, and that's why there were lots of appointments available there when I searched on Monday and zero anywhere less than 100 miles from home.

5) It occurred to me as I was driving home, along a route that I've driven countless times in the past for Friday escape/Sunday return, that this 105 mile (each way) trek is the farthest from home I've been in five months. The last was our road trip to the North Coast mid-October. Yes, just trying to get a damn vaccination has been my biggest adventure in almost half a year.